Philip Weinberg dies at 86; brought pubcasting to central Illinois

By | February 27, 2012

Philip Weinberg, “the man responsible for bringing public broadcasting to central Illinois,” according to the Peoria Journal Star, died Thursday (Feb. 2) in Peoria, Ill. He was 86.

“Not only did he start public radio on the Bradley [University] campus,” said Chet Tomczyk, g.m. of WTVP-TV, “but when he came across Sesame Street, produced by the Children’s Television Workshop, he decided that here was a show that people in this community needed to be exposed to.” So Weinberg arranged for the program to play on another local channel for six months before it could be carried on the pubTV station that Weinberg put on the air in June 1971, Tomczyk said.

Weinberg was also a former dean at Bradley University, and “a Renaissance man, one of those visionary transformational figures, not only for Bradley but the central Illinois community,” said Jeff Huberman, dean of Bradley’s Slane College of Communications and Fine Arts. “That was a college Weinberg not only created but ran for nine years,” the paper noted, “after serving as chairman of the school’s electrical engineering department for 20 years, a department he also created.”

The broadcast signal for WQPT-TV in Moline, Ill., is now originating from WTVP-TV in Peoria, about 90 miles to the southeast. WQPT previously outsourced its master control operations to Westar Master Control Services in Cedar Hill, Texas.

Moss Bresnahan will become the public television system’s first dual president when he takes over in September at WTVP-TV in Peoria, Ill., and WILL-TV, 90 miles to the east in Urbana-Champaign. He succeeds interim dual General Manager Chet Tomczyk, who delayed his retirement from WTVP to temporarily lead the two stations.

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